Paul Wolfowitz was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Ithaca, and was a 1965 graduate of Cornell. He was a student of noted history professor Walter LaFeber.

In 2004, the Cornell Alumni Magazine wrote: "This soft-spoken son of a Cornell mathematician has found himself at the epicenter of an ongoing war of ideas surrounding the use and abuse of American power."

For coverage of speeches Wolfowitz gave at Cornell in 1992 and Syracuse University in 2002, click on Continue reading the entry, below.

DEFENSE DEPUTY: PROTECT HOMELAND

WAR ON TERRORISM MUST FOCUS ON U.S. PROTECTION AS WELL AS HUNTING SUSPECTS, HE SAYS.

The Post-Standard

Tuesday, April 2, 2002

EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A6 LENGTH:

BYLINE: By Nancy Buczek Staff writer

Instead of focusing on the next threat against the United States, the country needs to focus on how to protect itself, said Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary of the United States.

"It was time to move from a threat-based strategy to a capability-based strategy," he said during a speech at the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel Monday night. "The terrorists of Sept. 11 found our vulnerability."

Wolfowitz, the No. 2 official at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was the keynote speaker at a kickoff dinner for a six-week National Securities Studies Management Program, a professional development and training program for the Defense Department at SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

About 50 senior-level civilian executives and Defense Department employees are enrolled in the program, which is conducted jointly by the Maxwell School and Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, said David Berteau, director of the National Securities Studies program.

About 100 people attended Wolfowitz's address, which he called, "The way ahead in the war on terrorism." He focused on the transformation of the Defense Department and changes in how the United States prepares for war.

"We can't prevent surprise, no matter how much we try," Wolfowitz said.

Protecting our homeland is as important as maintaining an aggressive stance against those who commit acts of terror, he said.

"Indeed, Sept. 11 is a pale shade of what could happen," Wolfowitz said. "We've been lucky so far in not suffering more attacks."

Wolfowitz said America's war on terror was far from over. Although media reports have focused on Osama bin Laden as the target of the offensive in Afghanistan, Wolfowitz said the war is about much more.

"This is not about one person - we have to look at the whole problem," he said.

The U.S. military is looking at old ways of doing battle, such as using horse cavalry for ground strikes, and combining those methods with new technology to wage a successful war in Afghanistan, he said.

"It's not just about new technology. It's about using old technology in new ways," he said.

The military also needs to improve its long-range attack ability because geography or politics may prevent U.S. forces from getting close to its desired targets, he said.

The U.S. has to use any means of leverage it has to wipe out terrorism, including using the departments of treasury and intelligence as well as police agencies, Wolfowitz said.

"This is not just about defeating terrorists. It has to be about rebuilding a better world when terrorism is defeated," he said.

PENTAGON AIDE DOWNPLAYS LEAKED PAPER

IN A TALK AT CORNELL, HE WARNS AGAINST CUTS AND SAYS THE U.S. DOES NOT SEEK TO DOMINATE.

The Post-Standard

Wednesday, April 8, 1992

EDITION: Cortland

SECTION: Local News PAGE: B1 LENGTH:

DATELINE: ITHACA

BYLINE: By LILLIE WILSON The Post-Standard

The Pentagon's senior policy maker defended his view of U.S. military domination of the world stage at Cornell University on Tuesday, but said it was a mistake to call it domination.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, whose leaked Pentagon paper made front-page news in the Sunday New York Times one month ago, said it was "nonsense" to suggest that the Pentagon favored a degree of U.S. military power beyond than that of all other countries combined.

"But we can retain the leadership of an alliance of democratic countries that, without any difficulty, now can be stronger than any potential adversary," he said. "That is the goal."

Speaking to an audience of mostly faculty members in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall, Wolfowitz warned that any further cuts to the defense budget would cripple the Pentagon's power to forge the right kind of alliances.

Excerpts published March 8 from his leaked draft paper stated in part, "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival," and that the United States must "establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role."

In dealing with industrialized nations, the United States should "discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order," the paper read.

Tuesday, Wolfowitz derided the publication of the excerpts, saying he and his boss, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, had said virtually identical things in congressional testimony without being reported. They were played up a month ago, he said, only because they came from a draft of a secret Pentagon document.

The whole debate is really a front for the battle over how big the defense budget should be.

"That's what this is about: This is inside Washington politics," he said. "I think what is clear is the Times is ready to make the kinds of cuts in our military that I believe will make that kind of alliance cooperation impossible."

Under the current schedule of cuts, about 1 million servicemen will be dropped from the U.S. armed forces, and about the same number will lose their jobs in the defense industries, Wolfowitz said.

He recommended the government should consider "moderating the pace" of the dismissals in order to minimize the disruption of the soldiers' lives.

The course of events in the Persian Gulf has left little doubt, he said, that U.S. leadership averted what would have become a nuclear war waged by Iraq.

"It is best to act when threats are small," he said, applauding the quick U.S. reaction to the invasion of Kuwait.

A 1965 graduate of Cornell, Wolfowitz told the students that his generation had grown up being told that they were inferior to the Russians because of Soviet leadership in space exploration.

"Your generation is being told that you're stupider than the Japanese," he said. "I don't know if that's progress or not."